[Fear and images of illness: the opposition cancer/cardiovascular diseases (author's transl)]

Abstract

A survey has been carried into cultural factors of differentiation, concerning the opinions and attitudes of people towards health and disease; it offered on opportunity to ask questions about cancer, cardiovascular diseases and the most feared conditions and symptoms. It is cancer which people are mostly afraid of with cardiovascular diseases very far behind. If we analyse the answers and the statements of people on this subject, a certain image of cancer becomes evident, which explains partly why people are so frightened and wich is evidently opposed, point by point, to the image of cardiovascular diseases. In addition, it is sex, more than educational level or age, which brings a differenciation between the answers: women seem concerned by cancer problems and men by cardiovascular diseases.